Classics
by southofhome
Summary: As Killian gets used to Storybrooke, Emma starts to notice something. Her 300-year-old pirate sure has a thing for the classics.


Killian Jones was a fan of the simpler things in life. He was forever fascinated by all the modern technologies of her world, and rather adept at adapting to life in Storybrooke in such a short period of time, but she still noticed that her pirate would gravitate back to the things most people had passed up long ago.

In the mornings, when the dew was still drying off the window panes of her new home by the sea, their new home by the sea, she would flick through her news feed on her tablet, catching up on the latest stories of the day in bite-sized bits. He would sit across from her at the table, the latest edition of the Portland Press Herald stretched out in front of him. She had reminded him the town had their own paper, The Storybrooke Mirror, to which he had huffed and responded "Bloody rubbish, that is," if she recalled correctly.

He marveled at all the capabilities of her smartphone, yet refused to carry anything more than the flip phone her father had passed down to her, insisting he was pleased with the small yet efficient device that he could use to call up David for a night on the town with the click of a button. She rolled her eyes, as too often their nights out ended up involving her interference as part of her Sheriff duties.

He would sample her drinks when they ended up at The Rabbit Hole together, forever fascinated with all of the strange combinations people had developed, and the puzzling names coined for each concoction. But he always ordered the same two drinks, his rum, ever the pirate, or a glass of whiskey, neat. He would raise an eyebrow and shoot her a wink, sipping his drink as she laughed into hers.

Killian quickly became Henry's video game companion, the pair spending hours on the coach conquering whatever game her kid was currently fixated on. But when Mary Margaret and David pulled an old Atari console out of their closet during a spring cleaning, he fell in love with the simplicity of those characters, the stories for those games. And when he raised his eyes to her, blowing into the game cartridges to clear out years worth of dust, she absolutely did not feel her stomach clench.

He wouldn't bat an eyelash when she asked him to navigate her iPod, switching the song that was currently blasting out through the house as they cooked dinner together. But when they unearthed an old record player at Marco's garage sale, it was the low timbre of Frank Sinatra's voice and the scratch of a spinning record that they made love to on rainy Saturday nights.

It became a mission of Emma's to find these relics of the past, antiquated items that the towns folk had long since discarded. She asked around, recovering an old Polaroid camera from Granny. The pictures he took were pinned up on the refrigerator, putting all her Instagram posts to shame, filter effects be damned. Grumpy found his old HAM radio in the closet, and for weeks Killian and Henry huddled around the massive contraption, inventing code names they used to talk to other people they managed to connect with through the crackling static.

Henry liked to call him old school, to which he feigned indignation, accusing her son of mocking him for his old age. Now, when Henry mentioned his affinity for "ancient artifacts" he simply laughed, ruffling the boy's hair and smirking at the glare shot back at him.

She often wondered at his preoccupation with these things, why the man that had read every appliance manual in her house to understand the inner workings of all objects in this world would get so caught up on things others tossed in the trash. She asked him this once, as he tinkered with an Etch-a-Sketch Ruby had uncovered last week. He was currently making a portrait of "his favorite lass", although if that was what he thought she looked like it was a wonder he had stuck around at all.

He thought for a moment, looking up at Emma, her blond curls falling from a hastily done ponytail, cheeks pink from the chill of a fall day, red lips curled up in a small smile. He thought about the girls on the magazines his Swan kept tucked in a basket near her couch, magazines he bypassed to pick up a dog-eared copy of East of Eden. He had analyzed those girls before, with their fake curves and fake smiles, airbrushed and artificial. He thought about the women in the movies he and Swan caught on Friday nights under the stars, the old film clicking through rotating reel of the projector. Those women, with their real figures and real personalities, so much more regal than most of the women in today's films.

He reached up and thumbed the dent on her chin. "What can I say Swan, I just can't resist a classic."


End file.
